Articles

Victoria Beckham shows girly side with new dress collection

Jun 30, 2011Katherine Sweet

Hormones are in the air. Victoria Beckham’s pregnancy may be having an interesting influence on her new collection. With her baby confirmed to be a girl, Beckham is wondering if her hormones are affecting her work. Victoria by Victoria Beckham, a dress collection for spring 2012, apparently has a, well, girly feel, reported WWD.

“One of my team said, ‘It would be funny if you found out you were having a girl.’ Because this is the most girly collection I’ve ever created,” Beckham said to WWD, recalling a staff member’s comment before the sex of the baby was disclosed.

The “girly” collection will be offered at accessible prices, with most looks falling between $550 and $900. The dresses reflect Beckham’s “other side,” as she puts it, rather than her usual, more glamorous self.

“These are the kind of dresses I’ve been searching for,” Beckham revealed. “The perfect little summer dress — something that was fun, something that was girly, something that was easy to wear, something that would take you from day through the night.”

Beckham declared she is her own archetypal customer: If the piece is not something she would wear, she tosses it.

Drawing from the cartoon character Emily the Strange – an edgy youngster with four cats – the whimsical pieces feature clean Sixties-style lines and burst with color down to their fine details of scalloped edges, Indian embroideries and pleating – and sometimes Emily-inspired kitty prints.

“Where I am currently, I like a more modern attitude,” Beckham maintained. “Also, it means that I’m opening these designs to women and girls of all different shapes and sizes, people who maybe want something less tight and clingy and structured. It also makes it more comfortable for during the day. You can wear them with a pair of flats or a pair of heels and they look great.”

Accessibility is crucial for Beckham, who notes that while a couple of pieces may go for as high as $1,300, this collection is designed for value.

“I take it into account when I’m designing the other line as well. Simply having a pocket — there are repercussions. Even with a handbag that costs thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds, I’m not going crazy,” the designer said. “I’m still aware of how much the hardware costs exactly, exactly what the skin costs, how much the lining costs. At no point do I ever say it’s one of those one-off showpieces.”

Sales for the first season are anticipated to pull in less than 10 percent of overall turnover. Zach Duane, de facto CEO, noted that the new collection has “the potential to become more commercial than the main line because of the way we’ve chosen particular structures to make the dresses and we’re working with slightly different factories.”

“We had to do something,” he said, “or we’d be a niche brand forever.”

Duane is not afraid to guess some numbers. In 2010, he estimated a $7 million turnover, which ended up coming in at $6 million. For 2011, he has decided to be more conservative, predicting the collection will surpass $12 million in sales.

“But it could be far more than that. With Victoria, we seem to be catching up with demand the whole time,” he pointed out. “So I put conservative numbers into our business plan without a doubt that, season-to-season, we smash those about by about 30 or 40 percent.”

The dress collection is one of many new steps for Beckham, who is looking to develop other product categories and further retail, both online and brick-and-mortar.